As universities increasingly operate on a global stage, they should not lose sight of their local identities, vice-chancellors have said.

Speaking on the final day of ����Vlog’s World Academic Summit, leaders of universities in Botswana, Wales, Canada and England urged institutions to balance local and global outlooks in an era of growing international competition.

“Whilst you are talking about competitiveness and globalisation, you need to also say, ‘Where does our culture come in?’,” Tebelelo Seretse, chancellor of the University of Botswana, told the event being held at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST):

Reflecting on the need to dismantle “colonial relics” in the education system, Seretse said universities must consider: “How do we tell the correct stories now to our children? How do we teach the correct theories?”

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“When you are talking globalisation, you are talking importing a culture which is not your culture. You are, at the same time, importing best practices,” she added. A key consideration, she said, is how to “have these best practices in such a way that they do not destroy the very foundation of the culture that you are trying to teach your children”.

Wendy Larner, president and vice-chancellor of Cardiff University, said a goal of the institution was for its “global civic aspirations [to] be embedded in absolutely everything we do” while being “of Wales, not just in Wales – culturally, linguistically, as well as economically and socially”.

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“We’re working really hard to think about how we embed a proactive approach to the future,” she continued. “Futures are co-created, and universities play an absolutely crucial role in co-creating those more just, inclusive, diverse futures”.

Bill Flanagan, president and vice-chancellor of the University of Alberta, discussed the institution’s response to Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, led by Murray Sinclair, which .

Alberta must work “to advance reconciliation and become a university that include[s], in a very meaningful way, Indigenous perspectives and knowledge, and Indigenous students, faculty and staff”, Flanagan said.

Highlighting the university’s Native Studies faculty, its research institute devoted to the revitalisation of Indigenous languages and its First Peoples’ House for First Nations, Métis, and Inuit students, he acknowledged, “Of course, much more work needs to be done. The process of reconciliation is an ongoing one.”

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At Durham University, “over a third of our students come from outside of the UK, and 40 per cent of our staff”, said vice-chancellor and warden Karen O’Brien. “Yet we find ourselves in a region of the country which is not especially diverse, and where there is a very significant divergence between the university population and the local population”.

Durham, O’Brien said, has previously been seen as “a university that was a little bit isolated from its community: very functional nationally, very connected internationally, but perhaps not so connected locally”.

As vice-chancellor, she said, her aim is to “think about ways in which we can bring that international and national outlook together with the place where we are”.

emily.dixon@timeshighereducation.com